I really like that the author helped them and it sounded odd to me to read "The prevailing wisdom for this seafaring situation is “Don’t Stop.”", before I realised that in different countries there are different threats. Sailing mainly in the Baltics, there is the opposing rule of having the duty to help people in distress at sea.
I'm not sure I fully understand the "learning" part, isn't this a bit of survivor bias, especially the boldness part? Risking all your money in a society with a safety net is different to me than risking your own life on high sea, mainly w/o knowing in what situation you bring yourself. There is a huge group who's story can't be told anymore. However, maybe I'm already too lazy and unwilling to take risks.
Real world use case: geocaching.com uses it to hide hints, so you don't read and spoil yourself by accident. It's pretty much accepted and adopted by the users. I also would ban words like "dumb" or, for another example "easy" in IT and CS contexts.
I came to the comments to state exactly your first line. When I served in the German army, no combat involved, the amount of physical activity was at a very high level, so I was basically constantly tired and was able to fall asleep in under 30 seconds, even when sitting in the classroom.
I can't give you specific advice, but in general it sounds you are already on the right track. You are basically exposing yourself to this new stuff, it raises questions that you want to have answered and you reach out to a community to know more. The stuff they wrote you don't understand YET is part of the journey and if you continue to practice work in that domain, you will be able to connect the dots. TL;DR My advice is, be fair to yourself, accept it's a new domain and be resilient and continue despite the difficulties. I hope a systems programmer will give you more specific advice.